An Example of Evangelical Catholicism in Practice

Jesuits at the Court

of Akbar the Great

in the late 16th 

century

There was a good homily at Mass yesterday morning for the feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola.  The priest, retired military chaplain and former missionary up on the Peruvian Altiplano—a man of some truly wonderful experiences—praised the Jesuits.  Turns out that he, like I, is a product of Jesuit schooling, though he went first cabin: Georgetown and Fordham. 

What he praised the Society of Jesus for is that they are not afraid to ask “Why?”  They are always willing to question.  This is rooted in the spiritual experience of Ignatius himself.  Ignatius had not been an easy convert: it took God’s Grace a lot of effort to reel him in and land him in the net of the saved.  And once in Peter’s barque, Ignatius was not afraid to question the tried and the true and do things in new ways.  For example, his “Companions of Jesus” were the first religious community to reject the “choral office”—choosing rather the somewhat revolutionary (at the time) idea that they should say their daily offices privately and individually rather than sing or chant the prayers liturgically in the church. Also  Ignatius didn’t mark a distinctive habit for the men of his new Society to wear.  Normally they dressed like secular priests.  But when there was need for them to adopt lay clothing—such as for their missions in Elizabethan England or persecuted 20^th century Mexico—they had no trouble doing so.  Jesuit missionaries to China first took on the robes of Buddhist monks and then, when they realized that this strategy hadn’t been the best to gain them access to the influence where they could make converts, they switched to the dress of mandarin scholars.  They also began saying Mass in Mandarin three and a half centuries before Vatican II put the Mass in the language of the people.  (Mandarin wasn’t the language of the ordinary Chinese, but of the scholars—similar to the Latin of 17^th century Europe.)    And yes the Church had “condemned” the thought of Copernicus and Galileo—but that didn’t stop Jesuit scholars such as Christopher Clavius or Wenceslaus Kirwitzer from their studies of the skies.  (Actually the list of Jesuit Astronomers in the 16^th and 17^th centuries is amazing and even today it is one of the most widely practiced sciences among Jesuits.)  There are always Jesuits thinking outside the box: they are seismologists, molecular biologists, computer scientists, ornithologists, mathematicians, paleontologists, botanists, and zoologists.  Jesuits are and have been musicians, philologists, natural historians, medical doctors, physicists, playwrights, poets, and lawyers.  Jesuits have served in the United States Congress and other parliamentary bodies, served as ambassadors, government ministers, university presidents, editors, and on governmental panels.  They have also taught high-school freshmen basic masculine hygiene, worked as chaplains in emergency rooms and hospitals, been missionaries under the most difficult circumstances and served as parish priests.  They have been confessors and spiritual directors to popes, kings, queens, and scullery maids.  There have been more than a few saints among them and, as in all groups, their share of sinners.  They have given their lives for the faith at the hands of Elizabethan Protestants, the North American Iroquois, Soviet Atheists, and U.S. sponsored militias in Latin America. They are truly the most phenomenal group of religious to have served the Church through our two millennia of spreading the Gospel.  Though there have been several communities of women religious who have modeled themselves on the Jesuits, the Society acknowledges no female branch, never has, and claims it never will.  Though I supposed they should be brave enough to ask themselves the question they ask everyone else in authority: “why?”

When we talk about evangelical Catholicism, the Jesuits exemplify the model.  They are men profoundly rooted in the Word of God.  From their first days in the novitiate Jesuits are formed in the Spiritual Exercise of Saint Ignatius Loyola—a thirty day retreat in which the new disciple is led through profound meditation to reflect on his own sinfulness, the life and teaching of Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus, and the Resurrection of Jesus and the impact that Resurrection is meant to have on our lives.  Those spiritual exercises not only give shape to the Jesuit’s own spirituality but his life and ministry for others.  The challenge is how to take this personal encounter of Christ, an encounter rooted in the Word of God, and make it the very blood that flows through our veins. 

One thing Jesuits—collectively—are not known for and that is quality liturgy.  (One of my favorite axioms is: “As confused as a Jesuit in Holy Week.”)  This is somewhat unfair, as some Jesuit establishments are known for the excellence of their liturgies.  I think of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown DC, for example.  But by and large Jesuits tend to be a bit “low Church.”  Nevertheless, while the liturgy may not the most exciting, the sacramental life is intense.  Jesuit parishes: Holy Trinity in DC, Saint Ignatius or Saint Francis Xavier in New York, Saint Ignatius in Chicago, Saint Louis University Church in Saint Louis, Saint Ignatius or Saint Agnes in San Fran, The Gesu in Milwaukee, Saint Ignatius (they keep using that name) in Boston—are life-filled and lively centers of Catholic life and worship.  People come to these churches, they hear the word of God preached, they are welcomed into the community of the Church, and brought into a deeper life in Christ. 

I am obviously a super fan of the Society of Jesus and their contribution to the Church.  And delighted that we have a Jesuit Pope who is opening doors and windows and blowing the musty air out of the Church.  Ignatius’ motto was Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam—to the Greater Glory of God.  Well done good and faithful Jesuits!

Rethinking God III

Model of the Jerusalem Temple where

sacrifices were long offered to God in

the period of the Hebrew Scriptures

After reading the previous post about how our ideas of God have evolved since the historical periods  in which the Hebrew Scriptures were written one of my readers sent me this letter which had been circulating on the internet some years back.  You may remember Dr. Laura Schlessinger, physiologist turned advice counselor/radio personality, whose nationally syndicated radio show ran from 1994 to 2010.  From 1998 until 2003 Dr. Schlessinger practiced orthodox Judaism and often brought her religious insights to bear on the advice she dispensed to her listeners.  For the most part this very rich tradition was well received but people who did not share her religious convictions sometimes found her opinions off-putting.  These adversaries were not necessarily non-believers but often Christians and Jews who had a “different read” on the meaning of Scripture for contemporary society.  I want to print a letter purportedly directed to Dr. Schlessinger  that was circulated about twelve years ago that spoofed her biblical literalism.  I do this not to support the views of those who disagreed with Dr. Schlessinger but rather to show how different our understanding of God is today—even Dr. Laura’s understanding—than it was two or three millennia ago.     

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.
a.              When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
b.              I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
c.               I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
d.              Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
e.               I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
f.                A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
g.              Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
h.              Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?
i.                 I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
j.                My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev.24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev.20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your devoted disciple and adoring fan,

J. Kent Ashcraft

 

Roots of the Reformation XIV: A Historical Take on Anti-Clericalism and the Protestant Reformations.

The medieval English Church at
Dartmouth in Southern England

I mentioned in our last entry that anti-clericalism is a very important monitor of danger for the Church.  Distrust of or discontent with the clergy undermines the Church as an institution and alienates people from the practice of the faith.  I want to look at this from a historical perspective.

One of the characteristics of the Churches that sprang out of the series of sixteenth-century Reformations that we call “Protestant” is the amount of control the laity exercise in Church matters.  Indeed for the most part in the Churches of the Reformation the distinction between laity and clergy is all but obliterated.  The roots of this declericalization was not doctrinal but rather a reaction to the abuses of clerical power in the late medieval Church.  Doctrines such as “The Priesthood of All Believers” which stamp most Protestant Tradition arose because of the strong anti-clerical mood in European society.  In other words, the doctrines were primarily a reaction to the exaggerated clericalism of the medieval Church.  And—by the way—we Catholics must remember that those doctrines are not heretical but at most an exaggeration of the authentic Apostolic Tradition which we call “The Baptismal Priesthood”  or the “Priesthood of the Faithful” which is rooted in the New Testament and in the Fathers and is celebrated in the official Liturgy of the Catholic Churchy, most notably but not exclusively in the rites of the Sacrament of Baptism.       

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries there was a serious rise of anti-clericalism in Europe and in retrospect we can see how it made the Catholic Church vulnerable to the Reformers as well as paved the way for the Churches of the Reformation where the authority of the clergy was almost invariably replaced by strong lay control.  Calvin’s Geneva is one such example.  While John Calvin was the preacher and theologian for the Reformed Church in Geneva, actual power was exercised not by Calvin but by the town council which had determined that the Catholicism would be replaced by the Reformed Religion.  The Council often went against Calvin in its decisions about Church polity.  The laity, not the clergy, would chart the path for the Church.  This was true in most Reformed and Evangelical Churches—the clergy could persuade and encourage in their preaching, but decisions of Church polity were ultimately in the hands of the laity.  In England from the time of Elizabeth I onwards, Parliament would make decisions regarding Church polity.  Even the Queen had to concede certain points of theology and practice to the anti-clerical parties (The Puritan faction) in Parliament in regard to the approval of the Book of Common Prayer that was issued in her reign.  The bishops had a voice, but they did not have final word and into the twentieth century you had a predominately lay body, Parliament, not all of whom by any means were Anglican, making decisions about worship and other matters internal to the Church of England.  

We have gotten somewhat ahead of ourselves here.  Let’s get back to the period of history immediately before the various Protestant Reformations.  We had spoken some time back about John Wycliffe (see entries for April 27^th and 28^th 2011).   Wycliffe’s followers in England were very distrustful of the clergy.  Wycliffe, though himself a priest and holder of several fairly lucrative benefices, had preached against clerical wealth and privilege.  It was at this same time the Geoffrey Chaucer in England and Giovanni Bocaccio in Italy had drawn scathing portraits of the clergy in their varied literary works.  Friars were seen to be greedy and womanizers; monks, fat and lazy sodomites.   The secular clergy were seen as nickel and diming people with fees for every imaginable service they rendered.  How truthful were these caricatures?   Well, there were good monks and friars and priests, but the caricatures would not have worked in the various poems and narratives if there had not been some truth to them.  It was a time marked by some strong reform movements in the religious orders, but also by religious who refused to embrace the necessary reforms.  In other words, like today, you had good priests and not-so-good priests. 

Celibacy then, as today, is a tricky issue to speak of.  Popular mythology often points the medieval clergy as satyrs, totally ignoring the demands of celibacy.  The fact of the matter is that the secular clergy were pretty much ignoring celibacy, but they were not necessarily promiscuous.  Church law from the eleventh century onwards had forbidden the clergy to marry.  This was mostly a matter of preventing Church property from passing out of Church ownership to the heirs of the priest.  Children, by law, had rights of inheritance only if they were legitimate.  Prohibiting the clergy to marry rendered the children illegitimate and prevented them from suing for a share in their father’s estate.  Church properties were preserved for the Church.  The celibacy legislation worked fairly well in despoiling children and widows of their claims but despite the law of the Church, many priests continued to marry and have children.  The marriages were not usually solemnized—i.e. “blessed” in Church—but neither were many medieval marriages, especially among the more common folk.  What we call “common-law” marriages were taken much more for granted in the Middle Ages, especially among the peasantry and the working classes.  Weddings were mostly for the nobility and, after the twelfth century, the bourgeoisie.  Many priests lived in a stable relationship with one woman, having children by her and raising their children together.  This would have been especially common in both rural areas and on the fringes of European society—Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, where priesthood was often a part-time occupation combined with farming and where the collaborative work of family life was almost a requisite for survival.   This is not to gloss over clerical sexuality.  Clerical concubinage (a prelate, priest, or major cleric having a mistress), as differentiated from such common-law relationships, was by no means unknown in the cities and towns and among the hierarchy.  The stability of these relationships varied from the same sort of common-law marriages of rural clergy to the successive monogamy of a series of mistresses.  And, of course, there were those among the clergy and hierarchy, as there are in every place and time and profession—promiscuous swine to take whatever opportunity presents itself for sexual gratification.   Popes were rarely in a position to clean up this mess as more than a few were sexually active themselves. 

All this is simply a way of making clear that there was not much to admire in the clerical state.  There were fine priests of course; priests beloved and admired by their congregants for their devotion and pastoral service.  Then too there were priests admired and loved by their parishioners who had common-law wives and children and whose parishioners did not see anything wrong with that.  There were priests who were celibate and who were loved and admired by their parishioners.  And there were priests who were celibate but whose parishioners disdained them, even hated them, because while celibate they still begrudged their congregants good pastoral care. 

It was common practice for priests to hold lucrative posts called benefices.  The benefice might be the pastorate of a wealthy church that paid a hefty salary.  The benefice might be a position at the Cathedral.  The benefice might be the chaplaincy at a hospital or a school.  When the salary was sufficiently high, or the priest held several high-income benefices at the same time, he might pay out of his salary a “vicar” to do the actual work.  Priests might often live in a degree of luxury, a high degree of luxury, and do little or no work.  None of this helped clerical reputation and by the early sixteenth century clergy were often held in contempt.

The Church in the Middle Ages had become incredibly wealthy.  Over the centuries immense amounts of land had been left in wills and bequests to monasteries, parish churches, cathedral chapters, schools, and other religious institutions.  Unlike family lands which were always being both added to and divided by dowries and divisions among heirs, (and bequests to churches), the Church did not pay dowries nor did it leave lands by bequest to others.  Thus the Church and its various institutions only increased in wealth and property.  It was always the receiver, never the giver.  Of course, it did pay salaries, and not only to clergy but to vast numbers of servants and workers required to maintain the various institutions.  It also spent huge sums hiring stonemasons, carpenters, glaziers, smiths and others in the vast construction projects of the Middle Ages.  It made heavy purchases in everything from beer, wine, food, and clothing for its clergy and employees to silks, gold and silver and jewels, organs, incense and other requirements for services.  In other words, the Church was a vital part of the economy.  In addition to its lands and the revenues its properties generated in rents and leases, the Church depended on the non-voluntary contributions called tithes of everyone from small tenant-farmers to powerful merchants.  It was required by Church law and enforced by the civil officials called reeves that the Church got ten percent of your income.  As the Church grew richer—in some places owning up to a third of the land in a kingdom—and more opulent in its display of wealth, many—especially in the merchant class—began to resent that they had to pay these tithes when the Church seemed to be so wealthy.  With the rise of the urban business classes, people began wanting to reinvest their spare capital in order to make more money yet.  They were not happy in seeing their hard earned money going to an institution that seemed to have so much already.     

Another reason for the lack of respect of the clergy is that in the early and central Middle Ages, that is from the eighth through the thirteenth centuries, the priest was most often among the best educated, or even in some places, the only educated person, in the town or village.  Even where the priest was no more educated than the peasants he served, his guardianship of the Sacred and his control of the Rites was seen as giving him a quasi-magical power.  But from the twelfth century on, with the economic revolution in Europe that created a strong and vibrant middle class, the educational level in European society rose fast.  Laity began to read and study—and develop areas of expertise such as law and economics.  Educationally the clergy began to meet their peers among their congregants.  Even in the rural areas reason began to replace superstition and magic.  No longer did the word of the priest have authority simply because he was a priest.  His words were weighed for their value as they corresponded to the knowledge and insight of his listeners.  An individual priest might be respected for his intelligence and wisdom but by no means was such respect automatic; much less would respect be given simply because a person was a priest.  In fact, people did not hesitate to question the opinion of a priest and counter with their own insights from their experience and from common sense.   It was a new age and not all the clergy recognized that their control over the faithful had eroded.   

Convent Burnings and Anti-Catholicism

In 1820 the Bishop of Boston, Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus invited the Ursuline nuns from Montreal to send a community of sisters to open a convent and school next to his Cathedral in Boston. The Ursulines had a fine reputation for the education of young women both in Europe and in French Canada. In fact this was there second school in the United States as they had operated an academy in New Orleans—originally French and only recently acquired for the United States—since 1727. The Boston convent and school moved to Ploughed Hill—now renamed Mount Benedict—seven years later. Most of the students came from upper class Protestant families who found the idea of sending their daughters to a “convent school” quite fashionable. (Georgetown Visitation similarly had a large population of upper class Yankee Protestant students at this same period.) All this was well and good during the lull in anti-Catholicism in the early years of the Republic but it would change as the embers of anti-Catholicism were fanned back into flame by the mass influx of Catholic immigrants in the 1830’s and 1840’s and by the anti-Catholic preaching of rabid demagogues in the pulpit, preachers like the Reverend Lyman Beecher, father of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Beecher is probably best known for his abolitionism—his preaching and writing against slavery, but abolitionism is only a small part of a much larger picture. Abolitionism was certainly a noble cause but not all causes associated with American liberalism of the early nineteenth century were so idealistic. Yesterday we talked about the Whig party and the Whigs were the political expression of liberalism. The Whigs split, north and south, on the slavery issue but Whigism was primarily a Northern movement. The Whigs were anti-immigrant because they believed that the democratic ideals of the young nation could only be preserved by people of British ancestry since our Republic was founded to preserve the liberties granted to Englishmen going back to the time of Magna Carta. Representative Government came from the British Parliamentary heritage and while England itself still had a monarchy, its powers were severely limited by Parliament, particularly by the People’s House—the House of Commons. Whigs also saw and wished to maintain that Protestantism was rightfully seen, if somewhat unofficially, as the religion of this Republic. Catholicism was highly suspect. It owed allegiance to a foreign prince,—the Pope—who was an absolute monarch. Priests were agents of the Pope. These immigrants were coming—especially the Germans—from monarchial government. The Irish were worse. They were an inferior race, kept ignorant by their priests, and rebellious against their English masters. Nineteenth century “liberals” tended to be as prejudiced as any Grand Inquisitors of medieval Spain. The fact that most of the immigrants, and the Irish in particular, gravitated towards Jackson’s Democratic party only increased the Whig hatred of anything Immigrant, anything Irish, and anything Catholic. In addition to preachers like Beecher, and perhaps inspired by him, there was a rash of anti-Catholic literature with lurid stories about priests and nuns, vaults filled with the murdered babies of unholy liaisons, the dangers of a papal takeover of the American Republic, the suffering of Protestants in Catholic dominated lands, and other inflammatory prose.
A young Episcopalian student in the School, Rebecca Reed, converted to Catholicism and entered the Ursuline convent. It wasn’t a good fit and she was dismissed towards the end of her postulancy. Reed wrote a book Six Months in a Convent. The book was only published after the Charlestown riots, but drafts of the manuscript had circulated widely among Boston Protestants. The disgruntled would-be nun did not have a lot of good to say about her experience and her book was of a certain “escaped from the convent-genre” popular at the time for its sensationalism.
There was much social unrest in Boston and surrounding towns, especially among the laboring classes. The immigrants—in Boston mostly Irish—were cheap labor. Working class Protestants were finding it hard to compete for jobs. This added to the tension in the city.
On the evening of July 28th 1834, a distraught nun—Sr. Mary John (aka Elizabeth Harrison) knocked on the door of a Protestant Gentleman, Edward Cutter, in Charlestown and asked for help to reach an acquaintance in Cambridge. Mr. Cutter obliged. The next day Mr. Cutter went to the home of the acquaintance to inquire after the nun and was told that she had returned to the convent in the company (custody?) of her Mother Superior and the Bishop of Boston—now Benedict Joseph Fenwick. Rumors began to spread. Was Ms. Harrison being held against her will? Rebecca Reed’s monograph would certainly lead one to think this was a possibility. As the agitation spread, placards were posted around Boston declaring:
"To the Selectmen of Charlestown!! Gentlemen: It is currently reported that a mysterious affair has lately happened at the Nunnery in Charlestown, now it is your duty gentlemen to have this affair investigated immediately. If not the Truckmen of Boston will demolish the Nunnery Thursday night—August 14."

The nuns and the bishop did the utmost to head off trouble. Mr. Cutter and the Charlestown selectmen (town council members) were allowed to come to the convent and interview Sister Mary John, the sister whose flight to Mr. Cutter’s home had started the incident. The nun said that she was free to leave the convent at any time of her choice; she was not being held against her will. A few days later the selectmen were admitted to the convent and Sr. Mary John—not the superior, but again the nun whose notoriety had brought attention to the convent—gave them a thorough tour of the buildings. The Selectmen released a statement to be published in the press that Sr. Mary John was in good health, she was not being held against her will, and that the convent was in every respect a fit place for nuns and students.
That very same night, however, August 11, 1834, a mob of Protestants gathered outside the convent door, calling for the release of any being held there against their will. When a nun came to the window and asked them to disperse, declaring that the nuns and children had all retired for the night, the mob offered her “protection” if she wanted to flee. The Superior, Mother St. George, appeared and made what was probably the greatest mistake in the event, declaring “the Bishop has twenty-thousand of the most vile Irishmen at his command and you may read your riot act till your throats are sore, but you’ll not quell them.” This did not intimidate the mob in the slightest; it served only as a challenge. They dispersed only to come back about two hours later and about two thousand strong. The ringleaders set fire to barrels of pitch on the convent grounds. Fire companies came, but the firemen only joined the crowd. The mob, growing restless, broke into the convent through battered doors and shattered windows ransacking the place. The nuns and students fled to the gardens behind the school through back doors. The mob then torched the building. More to come

The image today is a sketch of the ruins of the Charlestown Convent